Rhubarb (30 page)

“Not exactly what I was expecting, but okay,” said Lee. “You
a salesman?”

Was he? It seemed like a lifetime ago since he’d picked up
Rick at the airport, or even since he’d abandoned him at Stewart’s house.
“Account rep,” said Martin. “Nothing to do as I drive around but listen to you.
I got XM so I could hear your show 24/7.”

Lee smirked. “You know, I always figured that if I did this
show long enough, something would eventually be true. But honestly, I didn’t
think it would be this one.”

“None of it’s true?” asked Martin.

“I can’t help that my audience takes it all a little too
seriously,” said Lee.

“But then why do you keep spreading it all around?”

“Because I’ve got an ex-wife and two kids in college, a new
wife and kid, a mortgage, and a staff of thirty-two to keep paid,” said Lee.

“Oh,” said Martin. “Is that why you’re coming along? For
ratings? More blurry video for wakernation.com?”

“This is what I do,” said Lee.

“I suppose,” said Martin. “But that’s not why I’m going.”

“I won’t get in your way,” said Lee.

Martin climbed into the back of his truck and dug out the
radio box, cringing as he moved Rick’s overnight bag out of the way.

Lee whistled, and said, “Lotta hardware.”

“Here.” Martin handed the box down to Lee and turned to find
his tools.

“What’s this?” Lee asked.

“It’s you,” said Martin. “They wouldn’t let me put XM in the
fleet truck, so I had to improvise.”

“But they’re going to let you take their truck to the Kuiper
Belt?” asked Lee.

“This probably won’t fall under the ‘incidental personal
use’ section in the FastNCo. employee fleet manual, no,” said Martin.

“Even though it’s an emergency?” asked Lee.

“Don’t remember,” said Martin, hopping down. “Don’t care
anymore.”

A few minutes later, as Martin lay on his back under the
passenger-side dashboard, Lee asked, “Have we figured out how we’re going to
get out to this portal thing?”

“Been thinking about that,” said Martin. “We have to assume
that they’ll have all the roads blocked, even the dirt ones, anything on the
GPS maps. But there’s got to be some kind of back way.”

“So we’re just going to head out in that direction?” asked
Lee. Martin shimmied out from under the dashboard and turned on the ignition.
Lee gaped when the plane of glowing alien icons slid into existence behind the
steering wheel.

“Mount up,” said Martin. “I thought we’d talk to someone
local first.”

~ * * * ~

“She’s going to be happy to see you,” Martin said as he
opened the screen door. He knocked, then called, “Doris. It’s Martin Wells. I’m
not going to tell you not to bring your shotgun this time.”

“Shotgun?” asked Lee.

Doris answered the door, wearing a simple dress, a loose
cardigan, and a double-barreled shotgun thicker than her forearm. “Martin? And
who’s this with you?”

“Doris Solberg, this is Lee Danvers,” said Martin.

The barrels rose a few inches. “That ain’t Lee Danvers,” she
said.

“Good evening, Miss Solberg. It’s a pleasure to meet you,”
Lee said in a smooth, familiar baritone that made Martin’s eyes widen along
with Doris’s. “May we come in?”

“Of course. Where are my manners? My, oh my, Lee Danvers in
my house,” she tittered as she stepped aside.

“We can’t stay long,” said Martin.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked. She scuttered into the
kitchen, then back. She slapped at Lee’s hand. “You’re not tall enough.”

“So says my mother,” said Lee.

“Probably makes up for it in other ways,” Doris said to
Martin. Martin cringed.

“I made another pie,” Doris called. “I been makin’ them
every couple days.”

“Found that secret ingredient yet?” Martin asked.

“Now, you know I haven’t,” said Doris. “I was saving this
one for Wanda’s grandkids, but…”

“This is the pie?” Lee asked.

“Not
the
pie,” said Martin. “But close.”

Doris herded Lee to the head of her kitchen table with a
piece of pie on her best china. She served one to Martin and then, heedless of
their protests, hurried away to put on a pot of coffee. “You’re going to be up
all night. I ain’t lettin’ you leave here without a cup of my coffee. I got a
Thermos around here somewhere. I’ll make you some for the road. You all heading
down to Deaver Creek and all the commotion?”

“That’s what we came to talk about,” said Martin.

“Excellent pie, ma’am,” said Lee.

“Ma’am?” said Doris, blushing. “Now, you call me Doris.”

“Doris it is,” said Lee.

Doris giggled and muttered to herself.

Does she know…?
Lee mouthed to Martin, waving his
fork at the ceiling. Martin nodded. “I have to tell you, Doris,” Lee said,
“it’s very good—but is, was, the special pie so much better?”

“Does he know…everything?” she asked Martin, waggling a pie
server at the ceiling.

“Oh, he knows,” said Martin.

“Good. I could never imagine leaving Brixton, because I’d
sound like a ravin’ loon anywhere else. Anyways, I couldn’t taste any
difference, but the aliens…? They’d shiver and quiver and order up another
slice.”

“But you don’t know the secret?” asked Lee.

“Lord, I’ve tried to figure it out,” said Doris, shaking her
head. “Eat up.”

“We hoped you might know a back way to Highway 360 from
here,” said Martin. “The Highway Patrol has it all blocked off, and…I’m trying
to help Lee get up there to do his show.”

Doris chewed her lips in Martin’s direction, then turned
back to her burbling coffee pot. “It’s worse than that,” she said. “Eileen
called a bit ago. Said they’re bringing in the National Guard. They’re lining
up trucks near the Corner.” She looked squarely at Lee. “Now, you know that
whoever that is, it ain’t the National Guard.”

“How long ago was this?” asked Martin.

“A few minutes before you knocked,” said Doris.

Outside, the sun was setting. “We’d better get going,”
Martin said to Lee, and then asked Doris. “Can you help us?”

Directions from Doris Solberg’s house to
somewhere about a quarter-mile north of the Deaver Creek bridge on Highway 360

“First, you go about three, maybe four miles south on this
road right out here. You’ll pass the Mitchell place. Then the old drive to the
Lazy W. You’ll want to go a little ways more to Juniper Road. There’s no sign,
but Edgar Wilcox has got a No Trespassing sign there. Ignore it, he’s harmless.
He just don’t like people much. And watch out for his bull. His boy’s always
leaving the gates open. Juniper’ll go east for a while, then bend north, then
back west, but soon you’ll be heading east again. Now, here’s where it gets
tricky…”

~ * * * ~

“Are we there yet?” asked Lee.

Martin stopped the truck about twenty feet away from a gate
at what appeared to be the end of the road, and rechecked his hastily sketched
map. “This should be the last one, or second-to-last,” said Martin. “360’s
right over there somewhere.” The next gate, theoretically a half-mile away, on
the other side of this pasture, opened onto a minor turnout along the highway.

Martin’s arms felt like jelly from handling the truck over
washboard roads ruined by rain, and from navigating tracks worn by ranchers on four-by-fours
and trailing herds. Martin put the truck in park, and reached over Lee for the
shake-up flashlight in the glove compartment.

Martin rattled the flashlight as he and Lee waded through
the grass to the gate, then switched it on. Lee groaned when the feeble light
landed on the latch, and the chain, and the lock.

“I hope you’ve got a pair of bolt cutters back in the
truck,” said Lee.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Martin.

Lee checked his cell phone for the thousandth time.

“Still no bars?” asked Martin. “I told you, it’ll get better
as we get near the highway.”

“Could you ram through?” asked Lee. “It’s almost broadcast
time.”

“No,” said Martin.

“Then what… What’s that?” asked Lee. “A staple gun?”

“We should probably step back by the truck,” said Martin.

From behind the driver’s door, Martin aimed the staple gun
over the hood. He squeezed, and earned a snapping ka-chunk. He’d hoped there’d
be a beam of light in the dark, that the morning sunlight had washed out the
special effects when he’d shot at Jeffrey, but nothing came out. No cohesive
bolt of blue, or red, or green. Not even a staple.

The fence post exploded. Lee and Martin ducked but couldn’t
help but watch as barbed wires twanged loose like razor-thin kraken arms in a
cloud of splinters. The gate twisted away, ripping grass and metal alike. A
narrow fifty-yard strip of grass and brush beyond the gate erupted in a wall of
flame. A sage bush blasted out of the ground, roots and all, and landed charred
and flickering a hundred feet away.

“Whoa. Ho. Ho,” Martin laughed.

“Holy crap. I thought you were joking,” said Lee.

“It’s Stewart’s.” Martin handed it to Lee for inspection.

“It’s a FastNCo. brand,” said Lee.

“He was hiding in plain sight,” Martin said, taking back the
gun.

The padlock and the chain were still intact, hanging limp
from the bent, relocated gate. The post had been reduced to a shattered,
charred stump. Little flames still flickered along the strip of burned grass.

“We might be able to squeeze through here,” said Martin. He
pushed on the gate, but it would have taken more strength than he possessed to
move it farther. He looked back for help, but Lee was already in the truck, checking
his phone again. That’s why they call them bumpers, Martin supposed.

The loaded truck bottomed out more than once. Grass and
sagebrush kept up a constant scraping sweep under the floorboards. For one
stretch, Lee had to get out and walk ahead, picking their way around an
impassable patch with the flashlight.

“How much farther?” Martin asked as they climbed what seemed
like the third rise too far. “I feel like we should be in North Dakota by now.”

Near the crest of the hill, Lee said, “Stop.” About a half
mile to the south, Highway 360 rose up the side of the bluff. A galaxy of
lights had descended onto the hillside, framing and pointing the way to the
gap. The Gap. Lee rolled down the window. Martin turned off the headlights.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I think we need to know what we’re up against before we get
any closer,” said Lee.

“Do you have time?” Martin asked.

“I’ve got a few minutes, and…” He held his phone up for
Martin to see. “Two bars.”

“Told you,” said Martin. He killed the engine and rolled
down his window, letting in the murmur of a crowd, not very far away. He
couldn’t see the road at the nearest point, or the promised gate, but it
couldn’t be more than a few hundred yards east. Staple gun in one hand,
flashlight in the other, Martin met Lee in front of the truck, and they set
off.

“Remember where we parked,” said Lee.

Their walk took them up a gentle slope that, after a few
moments, peaked, and Martin let out a low whistle.

“Oh, wow,” said Lee.

A Super Bowl of people, at least for the middle of nowhere
Montana, lined the road from the top of the bluff and down the hill, breaking
only at a brief dark gap for the Deaver Creek bridge. Like an aerial view of a
river through a city at night, the banks of the road twinkled with thousands of
flashlights, headlights, iPhones, and cameras. Two narrowing columns trailed
off to the north, steady parallel streams of faithful pilgrims, wide awake in
the night.

“Is this your fault or mine?” asked Martin.

A Highway Patrol car rolled cautiously down the middle of
the road, lights flashing but with no sirens.

“Oh, definitely yours,” said Lee. “Is that the gate?” At the
base of the dark slope, and to the north, there might have been a thickening of
the fence.

“Only one way to find out,” said Martin.

They found the gate a few minutes later, at the bottom of an
increasingly well-defined set of tracks rolling down the slope. The roadsides
were compacted with people. And some early-bird Waker had neatly parked a
six-figure motor home on the pullout, stretching like a castle wall from ditch
to crowded ditch on the other side of the gate. The roof of the RV bristled
with people manning cameras and telescopes.

“What do we do?” asked Martin. “We can’t blast our way
through that.”

“I could ask them to move,” said Lee. “Besides, it’s time.
I’ve got to get on the air now.”

“You go over there and you’ll be mobbed,” said Martin.

“Maybe not,” said Lee.

“Maybe there’s another gate farther north,” said Martin.

“You really want to waste more time searching for another
gate?”

“No,” said Martin.

“Then trust me and get that truck of yours down here,” said
Lee, dialing. He waded away through the grass with his phone to his ear. When
he looked back and noticed that Martin hadn’t moved, he said, “Hurry.”

~ * * * ~

When Martin finally reached the Screwmobile, he hung on the
hood for more than a minute to catch his breath, his gut heaving. Martin
stripped off his sweat-soaked FastNCo. polo, longing to be free of the
polyester. He put his hands on his head and paced, stumbling, his breath
returning slowly.

In his bag behind the seat, the only other shirts he could
find were more FastNCo. polos. He struggled one on over his clammy skin, hating
his flab, hating the rasp of the stitched logo.

Martin started the truck. As he waited for the plane of
icons to appear, a cheer rolled up from the road. Martin switched on the AM/FM
radio, already tuned to the station out of Billings. As he set off for the top
of the hill and the easy track down the other side, he recited with the
broadcast, “From Virginia Beach to Yreka, from the Rio Grande to the Upper
Peninsula…”